The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) and Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11ad are developing a multigigabit wireless personal and local area network (WPAN/WLAN) specification in the 60 Gigahertz (GHz) millimeter wave band. Chipset manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and telecom companies are also assisting in this development. 60 GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) transmission will scale the speed of WLANs and WPANs to 6.75 Gbit/s over distances less than 10 meters. The high throughout for WiGig communications results in a significant amount of heat that must be dissipated to perform appropriately, prevent damage to the device, and be safe to operate in various environments. Manufacturers have different designs to dissipate the heat generated by one or more chips or silicon-based devices used to implement the WiGig communications, some designs including heat sinks to dissipate heat, some designs including fans to dissipate heat, some using the product case to dissipate heat, some using ventilation holes in the case, and others using a combination of these or other heat dissipation techniques.
The personal basic service set (PBSS) control point (PCP) is the device in a WiGig network that coordinates data transmission schedules between devices on the network and between the devices and the PCP. However, the PCP has no information about the thermal dissipation capabilities of the non-PCP devices on the network so the PCP schedules time slots for communications by the non-PCP devices without consideration of thermal dissipation capabilities of the non-PCP devices.